Kentucky was very close in all of those elections, and McKinely carried most of the border states. In addition, most of the East swung Republican in 1896. The East trended the opposite direction in 1900.

Actually, Kentucky never had very lopsided results during the “Solid South” era, except for the 1864 and 1868 Democratic landslides. Not sure if FDR even managed to crack 60%.

In fact—fun fact—Donald Trump carried Kentucky a larger margin (30 points) than any other presidential candidate since Horatio Seymour carried the state by 49. (Similar to how Trump’s margin of victory was greater in West Virginia than any other presidential candidate’s in history.)